​US border agents rarely punished for abuse – study

US border agents are rarely punished for their mistreatment or abuse of immigrants and American citizens, according to a new report by an immigration watchdog.

The American Immigration Council found that 97 percent of abuse
complaints against US Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border
Protection officers resulted in no disciplinary action after an
investigation was completed.

The incidents that led to complaints range from physical beatings
and “excessive use of force” to sexual abuse and racial
profiling. In one of the more disturbing incidents, a pregnant
woman miscarried after a Border agent kicked her in the stomach.
Other immigrants complained that agents made them bare their
breasts or be subjected to lengthy strip searches.

The survey found complaints against US border agents usually took
years to resolve. The council reviewed 809 complaints filed from
January 2009 to January 2012. Of those, only 485 were
investigated and settled. The rest are still under investigation.

Of the 485 resolved complaints, only one resulted in a
suspension, the worst infraction levied against agents, according
to the report. Six complaints led to counselling, two led to
court proceedings, two led to verbal reprimands, and two led to
“written reports.”

Regarding the cases still “pending investigation, the average
number of days between the date the complaint was filed and the
last record date provided in the data set was 389 days,” the
report said.

“This absolutely confirms the experiences of our border
families and communities,” said Vicki Gaubeca, director of
the American Civil Liberties Union’s Regional Center for Border
Rights in New Mexico. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection is
now the largest law enforcement agency in the nation, and yet
this massive build-up of border enforcement resources has not
been matched with adequate accountability and oversight.”

The two federal agencies, both under the Department of Homeland
Security, have doubled in size in the last seven years, the
report said, while complaints filed against their agents and
officers have increased.

Customs and Border Protection did not comment to McClatchy news service on the report’s
findings. The complaints analyzed in the report were accessed
using a Freedom of Information Act request.

Physical abuse was the most common complaint, followed by
“excessive use of force.” Seven complaints dealt with
allegations of sexual abuse, including three allegations of
forced sexual intercourse and four of inappropriate touching or
forcing females to bare their breasts.

Yet 11 more instances that weren’t call sexual abuse by the
agencies were similar in nature, including forced nudity, abusive
strip searches, and more inappropriate touching.

Despite the rapid growth of the agencies and the rising amount of
complaints against agents, the Department of Homeland Security
does not offer statistics on complaints and how they are
resolved.

An author of the report – Daniel Martinez, an assistant professor
of sociology at George Washington University – said the findings
only represent a small sample of abuse involved with Border
agents. He told McClatchy hundreds of thousands of undocumented
immigrants returned to their countries each year, and 10 percent
claim they were abused while in US Border custody.

“This is just really scratching the surface of the true
population,” Martinez said.

The report doesn’t include a September 2012 incident in which a
Border Patrol agent jumped on the hood of an unarmed woman’s car
and shot the woman nine times, according to an autopsy report.

In March of this year, a US border agent
kidnapped and assaulted a woman, her daughter, and another girl
late Wednesday as the three undocumented Honduran immigrants
attempted to surrender. The agent committed suicide the next day.

Border Patrol agents have also killed at least 21 people in
recent years, 10 of whom were shot for throwing rocks at agents.

These incidents of excessive force have been the subject of past
investigations into Border agent behavior. A report by law enforcement experts – completed in
February 2013 and still officially shielded from the public –
chastised the Border Patrol for substandard investigations
following cases where US agents fired their weapons. The review
panel said that it could not determine whether the Border Patrol
“consistently and thoroughly reviews” instances where
deadly force was used.

The review was conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum,
a non-profit research and policy organization in Washington. The
group was offered Border Patrol case files on 67 shooting
incidents from January 2010 to October 2012.

The researchers found evidence of border agents at times
deliberately blocking a car’s path in order to shoot at drivers
who were attempting to avoid arrest but were not a direct threat
to anyone.

"It is suspected that in many vehicle shooting cases, the
subject driver was attempting to flee from the agents who
intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle,
thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating
justification for the use of deadly force," the report
reads. There were times when "passengers were struck by
agents' gunfire."